Murder most fancy, p.36
Murder Most Fancy, page 36
Esmerelda, who had not read the report, could hold it in no longer. ‘But like, the dude from the farm, Gordon, or Max, whatever his name was, he was like, your cousin. That’s not cool, man.’
This brought the room to an abrupt stop.
‘Technically speaking,’ Dame Elizabeth said to Esmerelda, ‘Gordon was my brother.’
Grandmother immediately marched across the room and began forcefully distributing NDAs.
CHAPTER 27
A LONG TIME AGO
‘You must remember, this was a long time ago. Things were different.’
How had the lab missed that? And how different could things have been to make having a baby with your brother okay? I snuck a peek at Astor; he looked normal—one head, two arms, an enormous property portfolio.
‘Ho-lee shit,’ I heard Esmerelda whisper. ‘Rich people.’
‘Gordon was one of many sons my father technically fostered. One of the many boys who passed through our dairies. My father didn’t even know their names. Nor did my mother. My “brothers” were never allowed in the house. They slept in a shed, like cattle. In those days, it was common to move children, I suppose they were teenagers, but really, they were still children, from orphanages and state homes out to farms to work.’
‘Hard labour,’ I said involuntarily.
‘Yes, it was. Extremely hard labour. The government placed them with families on farms as foster children. Only many of the foster children had no contact with their foster parents and worked instead as unpaid farmhands. Meanwhile, the government provided the foster parents with a stipend, supposedly to pay for the care of the children. It was one of the reasons my father’s dairies were so very profitable. Not only did the boys work for free, but my father was paid for the privilege.’
And one of the reasons, I quickly realised, why Dame Elizabeth was such an enormous philanthropist. She gave out of guilt for an ill-gotten fortune. She was Australia’s answer to the Nobel Prize. It also explained Max’s bizarre range of injuries and why he never saw his ‘aunt’ or ‘uncle’ again.
‘Supposedly, it was to give the boys work experience so they could get a job on a farm in later years. But it was a swindle. They were child slaves.’
I felt like I had been hit by a shovel. But not Esmerelda; she had a question.
‘And like, the chicks?’
‘Yes, girls too. They were sent into domestic service. Kitchens, laundries, cooking, cleaning, childcare.’
‘No, no, no, no!’ Gilly simmered, scrunching the tablecloth in her hands. ‘That’s just gossip! Rumours. Untrue slander.’
Dame Elizabeth held Gregory’s hand and reached her other hand out to Gilly. There was no interest from Gilly. Dame Elizabeth sighed and continued.
‘Gordon was such a special young man. He’d had an unfathomably difficult life, but he refused to give up. He always saw the beauty in things. The art. He was spiritually connected to the land. I had never met anyone like that before. I was barely seventeen and I thought, somehow, he was so exceptional that my parents might accept him. I was wrong. The day I told them I was pregnant, Gordon disappeared. A week later, I was married to Alexander and became Lady Elizabeth Holly.’
‘Gordon moved south or west or north, or all three. He changed his name and started fresh,’ I mused. ‘He became Maxwell Harraway. And then, when he came looking for you a few months ago, he took on another assumed name, Max Weller, in case you or your family investigated Maxwell Harraway’s past, found he had none and became suspicious.’
‘Maxwell Harraway?’ Gilly asked, her eyes darting from me to Gregory then to her grandmother. ‘The pearl baron? Phoenix Pearls? Harraway Industries?’
‘Yep. Same dude.’
‘No, no, no, no,’ Gilly repeated, letting go of the cloth and holding onto the table for support.
‘Problem?’ I asked Gilly, walking Perry Mason-style around the table.
‘He wasn’t Maxwell Harraway. No way. He was a gold-digger. A blackmailer. He knew our secret and was out to ruin the family.’ She shot Astor a hard stare.
‘What?’ Astor asked.
‘The Forrest Suite? For over eight weeks? Come on. He was blackmailing you.’
‘No, he wasn’t. He paid for the suite fortnightly, in cash, in advance.’
Gilly shook her head. ‘No way. It was blackmail.’ She glowered me. ‘If you’re going to play Nancy Drew, at least be useful. Tell him. It had to be blackmail. Who spends a million dollars on a hotel room?’
‘Ah, like, super-mega-rich-diamond-gold-pearl-mine dudes.’
I had some ideas around that. The hotel bill, not the mining of pearls. There had been a Phoenix Pearls store in the Sydney CBD for decades. However, for the past few months it had been partially closed for renovations. They were, among other things, installing security upgrades. It would explain Max’s easy access to large amounts of cash. That said, he probably had accounts with multiple banks and could easily have been making large, quiet cash withdrawals from an account he knew no one was keeping an eye on. He certainly had no shortage of funds.
‘Phoenix Pearls,’ Bettina said, coming up for air. Grandmother shoved an NDA under her nose and a pen into her hand.
‘Daddy,’ Gilly pleaded, plopping back down on the chair in defeat (and ignoring her sister). ‘You said he was a lech. A user. After our trust funds. That he was exploiting Granny.’
‘Yes, well, it certainly did seem that way. But if he is Maxwell Harraway, well, then that’s obviously not the case. I was mistaken.’ Gregory turned to me. ‘Uh, how much is Maxwell Harraway worth?’
‘Two and a half billion,’ I said as casually as possible.
Gregory straightened up and smoothed down his shirt, as if Max might walk through the door and find him wanting. ‘I will apologise in person,’ he said gravely to his mother.
‘Maxwell Harraway is dead, Gregory,’ I said.
‘Is he? That’d be a shame. Why do you say that?’
I shook my head. Gregory really needed to join Grandmother in Dorothy’s entourage and ask the Wizard for a brain. The Tin Woman handed the Trust Fund Scarecrow an NDA and a pen. ‘Sign.’
I pulled the chair next to Gilly’s out and sat down next to her. ‘I hear you’re the head of organic food at the Holly Park Hotel,’ I said, sliding the knives away from her place setting. ‘Considering you obviously didn’t like him, Max got a lot of complimentary meals during his stay.’
Everyone in the room was suddenly focused on Gilly. She was unfazed.
The results from Bailly’s wide-ranging toxicology tests, which took samples from blood, tissue, hair, nails, skin and saliva, showed that Max was slowly, and quickly, being poisoned.
‘Where does one find arsenic in the city, Gilly?’ I asked her.
I’d only had forty-five minutes to read over 150 pages of reports and had just managed to glean the basics.
‘Bunnings,’ she said nonchalantly. ‘Or eBay.’
Astor’s hand moved to cover his shocked mouth.
‘Oh, relax,’ Gilly said, frowning at him. ‘It wasn’t enough to kill him. Just enough to make him sick so he’d go home and leave us alone. I was protecting my family. It’s hardly a crime.’
I could feel Esmerelda formulating a rebuttal and I shot her a sharp stare and a small but blunt shake of the head.
‘Prolonged exposure to arsenic can cause liver, lung and kidney damage. It also impacts the nervous system,’ I said. Online science sites are wonderful things.
‘Not with Max,’ Gilly said, irritated. ‘He hardly changed at all. Maybe a few less day trips, a few more trips to the toilet and a bit of dizziness, but, otherwise, nothing.’
‘Max was stoic,’ I said to her. ‘He probably tried extremely hard to seem as healthy and normal as possible to you, his only granddaughter.’
It was Dame Elizabeth’s turn to say, ‘Oh my God.’ I nodded my head in agreement as I slowly spoke.
‘You didn’t think arsenic was working. That’s why you gave him something else. Tell me, Gilly, how did you get Max to eat nicotine? What food did you use to disguise the taste?’
‘God you’re stupid, Indigo,’ Gilly said. ‘Haven’t you heard of vaping? Liquid nicotine comes in about a billion yummy extra-strength e-cigarette flavours. Everything from watermelon to fairy floss.’
She was right. Sugar, alcohol and shoes were my drugs of choice. I knew nothing about smoking or vaping or whatever it was now called.
‘You were trying to give him cancer?’ Bettina asked her sister.
‘That’s a bit of a long-term caper, Gilly,’ Gregory said. ‘He’d already be dead by the time he died of cancer. The man’s ancient.’
Gilly exhaled and rolled her eyes in frustration. ‘Not if you drink it, Dad.’
‘Did he drink it?’ I asked her.
‘No. Drinking liquid nicotine can kill you. I didn’t want to kill him.’
Well, thank goodness for that.
‘Besides, flavoured liquid nicotine smells so artificial and he was so bloody healthy, he’d never have drunk it. And he was turning the free food away more and more. But Max loved pampering himself. He was forever in the bloody barber or the salon. So when he broke out in that rash, I mixed up a little cream for him.’
‘The rash was from arsenic poisoning,’ I told her.
‘Is that what it was? Huh. Well, that worked out well. Yes, he’d come down with a rash. I told him the cream was some homeopathic mango and almond concoction. It was just a pot of La Mer Body Crème with mango-flavoured liquid nicotine mixed in. Guaranteed results.’
La Mer Body Crème was $400 a pot. Between that and the arsenic-laced lobster, it seemed like a disturbingly extravagant way to kill someone. It was murder most fancy.
‘How long had he been using the cream?’
‘Don’t try to trap me, Indigo. He only used the cream once, that Saturday night,’ Gilly shot her grandmother a hard stare, ‘before his big date. You can’t die from nicotine cream. It’s like a nicotine patch.’
‘Like, how much of that mango stuff did you put in?’ Esmerelda asked, helping herself to an uneaten bowl of apple and rhubarb crumble. Grandmother snatched the bowl away and handed her a pen. Esmerelda signed another NDA, under protest, then immediately retrieved the crumble.
‘Only a couple of bottles. That’s barely a day’s worth of smoking in France.’
‘Yeah, but like, it’s heaps worse if it gets on your skin,’ Esmerelda said, spoon to mouth.
‘Is it?’ I asked Esmerelda.
‘Well, like, probably.’
I had recently learned there were a raft of rapid and rather nasty repercussions from ingesting nicotine, the worst of which was death. It made sense that absorbing it through the skin would be bad too. Who knows how much poisoned cream Max had used? He might have slathered it on like sunscreen at the beach. He might have used the whole pot.
I looked at Gregory. ‘That may have been why he spoke to you the way he did. Why he told you about his relationship with your mother. He might even have confused you with Astor. He had arsenic poisoning which, among other things, can cause confusion. Then he had been given a substantial dose of liquid nicotine. Nicotine poisoning can also cause confusion, as well as extreme excitability and hallucinations.’
‘No way!’ Gilly yelped.
Esmerelda swallowed the crumble. ‘Like, totally yes way.’
‘After you,’ I pointed to Gregory, ‘left Max in the shed, he probably came to dazed and confused. It was dark. He was cold. He stumbled around inside the gardening shed searching for something to wear and, finding nothing but old gardening clothes, put those on. Because of the dark and the poison—’
‘Poisons,’ Esmerelda corrected.
‘—yes, poisons in his system, and the fact that you had just given him a severe head injury, he was no doubt extremely confused. He walked into a wall. The back wall, where the metal rakes are hung.’
‘The false wall,’ Dame Elizabeth said in realisation, ‘that leads to the tunnel.’
Holly brows furrowed around the room. The secret tunnel really was a secret.
I nodded. ‘I think so. This not only accounts for some shallow thigh wounds, but also for his appearance in Grandmother’s garden. He walked into the rakes on the wall, accidentally opening the secret door to the tunnel. I think if we check the tunnel, we’ll find a trail of Max’s blood. He made it through the tunnel, into Grandmother’s orchid palace, and then out into the garden, where he …’
Where he lay down among the lilies and died.
Gregory began to pale. ‘What are you saying? Are you saying that Maxwell Harraway is really dead?’
Oh, Scarecrow.
‘Yes, Father, you moron, of course he’s bloody dead!’ Gilly spat across the table. ‘No, I’m not signing that bloody thing!’ she yelled at Grandmother. Astor patted his niece/daughter’s hand and signed.
‘No, there would have been blood on the lawn,’ Bettina put in. ‘Even the idiot police would have spotted that.’
I’d had the same thought.
‘It rained that night,’ Dame Elizabeth said slowly. ‘Quite heavily. I remember hoping Max’s flight to Perth didn’t have to take off in the rain.’
‘Yep. Totally checked. It bucketed.’
‘It would have washed the blood away,’ I said.
‘But his clothes!’ Gregory demanded. ‘His clothes were gone.’
‘As was the shovel,’ I put in. Bettina was right; Rope wasn’t so inept that he would have failed to find a bloody shovel and a bloody rake. Not to mention the fact that someone had closed the secret door on Dame Elizabeth’s side and Grandmother’s side, and cleaned up the blood that was no doubt on the gravelled ground in the shed and the polished concrete of the orchid palace floor.
Bettina was the first to notice that the Hollys had two more guests for dinner. Standing in the shadows, a shovel in one hand, a metal rake in the other and a dark green plastic garden garbage bag tucked under her arm, was Claire the gardener. Deeper in the shadows behind her stood her escort, James Smith.
It’s always the help who cleans up after the debauched family.
‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ Bettina demanded.
Claire’s eyes darted around the room in a panic, landing on her mistress, Dame Elizabeth, who issued her a kind, reassuring smile. ‘It’s fine, Claire. Come in. Speak with Indigo.’
Poor Claire was frozen. I felt her pain. Paralysing mortification was an awful sensation. I stood and crossed the room to her, touching her gently on the arm. ‘It’s okay, Claire, really.’ I bet my new Choos I knew the answer, but I asked anyway. ‘Are his clothes in the garbage bag?’
She nodded, her shaking hands rattling the metal tools and the plastic bag.
‘His phone, bracelet, watch?’
She nodded again.
‘Here, sign this,’ Grandmother said, poking an NDA at Claire. Claire, being the loyal employee she was, signed.
Before Grandmother could hand Claire’s escort an NDA, he was gone.
‘You kept the shovel and the rake too?’ I asked. This was a pleasant surprise. Forensically speaking.
‘Well, yes,’ she finally managed. ‘I didn’t want Bettina to yell at me … for losing gardening tools … or for buying new ones. I was going to bring them back. I’ve cleaned them.’
I eyed Bettina. ‘What?’ she defended. ‘Our tools are expensive.’
That was a gigantic understatement.
CHAPTER 28
MONEY WELL SPENT
Claire had come into work at 7 am that Sunday (beating Gregory Holly by hours) to check on the tulips. She quickly discovered a bloody shovel and a pile of clothes lying on the ground outside the garden shed, a bloody metal rake hanging on the back of the door inside the shed, and the secret doors in both the shed and the orchid palace wide open. Claire had no idea what had happened and although she had no love for Bettina, Gilly or Gregory (she liked Astor), she would have walked through fire to protect her beloved Dame Lizzy. So she said nothing, hosed down the ground in the shed, tunnel and orchid palace, closed the secret doors and smuggled the shovel, rake and clothes into her car boot. Incredibly, she then went back to work. Which is where I’d first found her, being berated by Bettina.
Gregory was charged with grievous bodily harm for his impassioned heat-of-the-moment work with the shovel. He pleaded guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence (three to six years). He now lives on a minimum-security prison farm, labouring without pay in the garden, kitchen and paddocks. He says it’s a little bit like a health spa.
The police did not agree with Gilly’s theory that feeding hotel guests small amounts of arsenic for weeks on end was not a crime. They felt that deliberately plying an elderly man with nicotine-laced lotion, even if it was $400 a pot and mango-flavoured, and even if it was just the one time, was also a crime. They charged her with homicide.
Dame Elizabeth hired Nigel ‘Barking’ Barker, guardian of the rich and guilty, to defend Gilly. Barker had the first-degree murder charge dismissed in exchange for pleading guilty to manslaughter. Gilly will serve her time at Silverwater. According to Esmerelda, it’s not at all like a health spa.
Claire was charged as an accessory after the fact. Dame Elizabeth hired Barker to defend her too. Barker found a doctor who claimed Claire was colourblind and therefore had no idea the gardening tools or gravel had blood on them. Besides, why would she assist Gilly or Gregory to cover up a crime? She didn’t even like them. No one did.
She was found not guilty. Dame Elizabeth gave her an enormous pre-Christmas bonus.
Photographs of the deputy state coroner Kevin Pasty having a torrid make-out session with a mystery blonde in a public bar were leaked by his wife and caused something of a sensation. That scandal paled in comparison to what came next, information indicating the very same deputy state coroner had hindered the full autopsy of one of the country’s ‘most beloved’ (read: richest) men, pearl baron Maxwell Harraway.
Pasty was fired.
Bailly was promoted. She declined the promotion. Being a forensic pathologist was her greatest ambition. She did, however, accept my offer to send Mother’s manager Eddy in to negotiate some benefits on her behalf before declining. Her budget was increased by two hundred and fifty per cent and she received a grant to complete her doctorate in her pet passion, marine forensic science.
